The new Hemerocallis cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the inventor Philip Dale Westmoreland, in Southern Louisiana. The objective of the breeding program was to produce new Hemerocallis varieties with strong performance in the landscape. This includes such characteristics as clear color, repeat bloom over a long period, strong and upright flower scape, high bud count, fade resistance of blooms, foliage appeal, and maintaining plant vigor throughout the season in a general landscape environment where it may not get optimum care.
Since the advent of daylily rust, beginning in approximately 2000, caused by Puccinia hemerallidis, the top priority in the breeding program has been to develop seedlings with a high resistance to daylily rust, in addition to the previously cited characteristics. The selection process involves no application of fungicides on any cultivars in our hybridizing program. This practices results in a loss of many cultivars in the program, but is necessary to determine which varieties may be rust resistant.
All daylilies from this program are hybridized, evaluated, and multiplied in plastic nursery containers using pinebark screenings as a growing medium and using overhead sprinklers for irrigation. They are grown in full sun outdoors year round. Each cultivar selected is confidentially evaluated for a period of 5 to 10 years.
The cross resulting in the variety know as ‘WF 73’ was made during 2006. The seed parent is an unnamed, unpatented proprietary seedling, as is the pollen parent. The new variety was selected in the September of 2009 by the inventor in a group of seedlings resulting from the 2006 crossing, at a commercial nursery in Franklinton, La.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar was first performed by root divisions at a the same commercial nursery in Franklinton, La. during 2009, and has shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type over multiple generations.